1. Keep All The Rules of The Scripture. There are quite a few laws and rules set forth in the scripture about dating. Keep them all. Examples are, not having sex before marriage, not being unequally yoked to unbelievers and the study of the principles and examples of a good marriage as set forth in the Bible. If you don’t know what these things are then you should be reading your Bible and seeking a Pastor or good Christian counselor to help you.
2. Pray About Every Aspect of Your Dating and Your Intention To Marry. This is not simple or rudimentary advice it is absolute bottom line essential advice. Miss this and you have missed the boat. Pray about your potential mate, pray with them and pray together with others as well. God is always honored when we include him in all our intentions and decision. To leave him out of such a major decision (marriage) is ridiculous and could only be insulting to God. Remember he is not just Jesus, he is the Lord Jesus.
3. Take Your Time. Rome wasn’t built in a day, but it is not Rome Satan is constantly attacking. Marriage, especially good marriages are under constant attack in today’s atmosphere of throw away relationships. The breakup of the established fabric of most societies is something that prophecy predicts as one of the precursors to a time of anarchy and the rule of the worlds last dictator, the antichrist. Marriage is pretty high on the list of things to destroy in Satan’s agenda, don’t let him put yours on his list. Take time to look to listen to weigh your choice, thus giving God time to answer you back as you go.
4. Ask Your Prospective Mate this All Important Question. I wasn’t lucky enough to have heard this advice when I was a young man. I would have given a kingdom to acquire it and I have never seen it fail anyone in many decades of telling it to others. I originated this test but I must say I was always sure it was God inspired.
You must pose the question within specific parameters for it to work. First you must be sure that you tell your mate that this is a question that they might ask themselves if they were in a comfortable place where they go to sit and meditate or pray. You are not asking the question, they are asking it of themselves. No one accept the insane and fools would ever lie or try to deceive themselves. You would ask them, if they were alone in a comfortable place, a place they liked to be in to think and pray, and if they were to ask themselves one single question, what would their answer be, to themselves?
The question is. “If I could summarize in three sentences or less what I want out of life, what would my answer be to myself.” Let them ponder this question, don’t rush the answer but take their answer with utmost seriousness. People will rarely lie to themselves and the answer will be the truth almost without fail. If they say I just want to love and be loved, or I just want some security in life, or I want to get the best things in life or follow a career…those are the real and lasting answers, you can count on it. If you should not marry that person but were to come around to see them for a period of one or two or fifty years you would see one thing, they would have found the things they told you they wanted or they would still be looking for them.
What has all this got to do with anything? Only everything! By posing the question as outlined with an honest person you will have boiled the forty gallons of sap it takes to make a quart of grade “A” maple syrup. You can believe the answer; you can also be guided by the answer. That is, you can decide if the answer conjuncts with your own answer to yourself about your own life.
Comparing all of the common likes and dislikes you have with your prospective mate or having long intimate discussions is a good thing. But life is in motion; everyone has a direction real or perceived. Find out what that direction is before marriage and you will not crash against it after you are married.
Whoso findeth a wife (mate) findeth a good thing, and obtaineth favour of the Lord. Proverbs 18:22
